THE OFFICE: Best Episode Of The Season?

My roommate and I laughed essentially non-stop at last night’s Office episode, beginning with Andy’s wedding service offer and continuing through a hilarious (and legitimately engaging) mentor vs apprentice client-war between Michael and Dwight. The episode was just full of wall-to-wall laugh out L worthy lines (I good w/abbreviations), and I just couldn’t stop giggling at the Dwight line, “I knew that you would do that — their meatball parm is their WORST SANDWICH!”

Oddly, today I’ve been talking to some of my other friends who watched it (several of whom has disagreed with my dislike of this episode) who felt differently, that the episode was moderately funny but crappy plot-wise, and I couldn’t have disagreed more. The plot was not only plausible but interesting, to see both Michael and Dwight in their element with a clear goal in mind and pride at stake; people have pointed out how the longer run of the American Office has forced the producers to make the Michael Scott character a step above complete incompetence (and actually adept at selling to customers) as opposed to the utterly hopeless David Brent, who simply couldn’t have made it four seasons without getting fired. Last night’s episode was a perfect realization of this, with the two characters both being good at their respective jobs but believably ridiculous as people, and the color-coded “Orange means ORANGE-you glad you didn’t say that?” just capped everything off perfectly.

Also, Andy is fast becoming my favorite character, or at least just the surest bet to have funny things happen when he’s on the screen. From his “What I Hate About You” roast to his Feist-sugars pickup line to his “moving out of the way” dance last week to his amazing “You Can Call Me Al” a Capella solo this week, he’s somehow involved in the funniest moment of the episode every single week.

Also also, I love how I always say that I hate analyzing and quantifying comedy and prefer to just watch it, then can’t resist getting into lengthy arguments with friends about exactly that then coming here to seek the opinions of our readers. As always, I feel like independently of whether or not we enjoy a given Office episode, the fact that we cannot resist these debates about the characters and their situations is just a ringing endorsement of how legitimately this show has earned our following.

Thoughts on last night’s Office? Favorite moments? Leave ‘em in the comments!